Risk Analysis
What is this?
You have had so much interaction with stakeholders, you performed all these different kinds of analyses. What you could check, you did check. But there will always be risks and uncertainties. Otherwise this would not be entrepreneurship would it? However, you should articulate risks and also think about possible ways of mitigating them. It is important to be aware of all the remaining risks and think about potential solutions to them. This will increase your credibility towards stakeholders such as investors. If you don't ask these questions, they will certainly do.
How?
SWOT
An interesting tool to get insights in risks is a SWOT analysis catered specifically to your respective business models. It provides an excellent basis to compare. What are your business model's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? One peace of advice: be specific, in-depth and autocritical to make most of this framework. If you try to sweep obstacles under the carpet, you're fooling yourself.
More info? Read this article on wikipedia for general info about SWOT.
An incomplete list
Identify and discuss any major problems and other risks, such as:
- Running out of cash before orders are secured.
- Potential price cutting by competitors.
- Any potentially unfavorable industry trends.
- Design or manufacturing costs in excess of estimates.
- Sales projections not achieved.
- An unmet product development schedule.
- Difficulties or long lead times encountered in the procurement of parts or raw materials.
- Difficulties encountered in obtaining needed bank credit.
- Larger-than-expected innovation and development costs.
- Running out of cash after orders pour in.
- ...
Want to know more?
Risk analysis
REFERENCES
- "The Business Plan", J.A. Timmons and S. Spinelli